


The Herring Jumps

by ballantine



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Alternate Universe, Clue AU, whodunit
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-26
Updated: 2020-10-26
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:54:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27212272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ballantine/pseuds/ballantine
Comments: 1
Kudos: 3
Collections: Good Intentions: Abandoned and Unfinished WIPs





	1. A Cast of Suspicious Characters

They converged on the large old house with about the level of enthusiasm one might expect for a dinner party on a Tuesday night.

Perhaps forewarned about the body count the evening would tally, the world tried to stop the gathering from happening, or so it seemed. All the usual tricks were pulled out: gale-force winds, lashing rain, the absolutely hideous traffic on the New Jersey turnpike. But whatever higher power didn't want the dinner party to happen, if it indeed existed, clearly hadn't considered what it was up against – namely, the iron will of one Mr. Flint, alleged butler.

And so, with the grim portent and sense of inevitability that comes accessory to all dinner parties, the guests arrived at Hill House off Route 41 one-by-one.

The first to come – to the house that night but also as a general personal rule – was Colonel Mustard.

“That's not my name,” said Colonel Mustard.

Flint took his coat and folded it neatly over his arm. “You'll have to humor me, Colonel. My employer insists on the use of pseudonyms for all parties tonight.”

“Am I to understand that your name isn't really Flint, then?” was asked in the slightly smug tone of one who thinks he has laid a winning card. But Flint merely looked at him and smiled mysteriously.

The colonel didn't like mysterious. He preferred to reserve it for opium visions and confounding sex dreams. Having another man, even his social inferior – especially his social inferior – use it left him feeling like there was a threat in the room needed answering.

This standoff, baffling with its sudden escalation of tension and yet predictable for its heavy musk of testosterone, was only broken by the second arrival of the night, Mrs. White.

“Whatever, I don't care,” said Mrs. White, upon receiving her alias. Whether she was referring to the name or the purpose for the evening's gathering, it was hard to say.

When Mrs. White was brought into the library, Idelle the Maid turned to offer her an aperitif and blanched rather violently as their eyes met. The drink tray in her hands rattled an ominous accompaniment with the wind's percussion on the old windows panes.

Mrs. White, it must be said, didn't seem to care about Idelle's presence any more than she had her own.

She and the colonel stared silently at each other as they were introduced. By mutual unspoken agreement, each turned inward to their thoughts, and the drink in their hand, rather than make small talk with the other.

Next to arrive was a richly-dressed and beautiful young socialite, who swept into the house as if it were her own, and the dinner party already falling behind a schedule she herself set. She tolerated the name of Mrs. Peacock with a thin pretense at amusement.

She accepted her delicate drink glass and shot the contents back with a directness that might have been charming in a less tense situation.

Mrs. Peacock and Mrs. White glanced at each other and, with the immediate instinct some women have when confronted with a specimen of an altogether different and baffling breed of female, immediately dismissed the other from her mind.

As for the colonel – it could be said God, when she was adding patience to his character, had mistakenly used a teaspoon in place of a tablespoon; only this could explain the lack confounding to any reasonable person. He had already been seriously considering either leaving or threatening the butler for more answers, but the sight of Mrs. Peacock cleanly diverted both avenues of thought. He fell back and decided to stay a little while longer.

The next two guests arrived together. A great misfortune for them both, for each had already made their mind up to dislike the other during the ten long minutes they shared a cab.

The woman accepted the name Miss Scarlet, her disdain delicately tinted with an indeterminate but somehow unmistakable whiff of French.

The man spoke more words than the other four guests combined within his first three minutes on the premises. He took the name of Professor Plum, but only after criticizing the artistic taste of whoever was responsible for the pseudonyms. _Plum_ , he thought, lacked a certain something. And _Professor_ was just pretentious, though he would've been offended had anyone else been given it in his place.

Mrs. Peacock's commanding unconcern suffered a momentary lapse at the appearance of Miss Scarlet in the doorway of the library; Miss Scarlet raised her chin and offered her a satisfied smile that looked more confident than she actually felt.

The professor made a beeline for the colonel, as if to declare to the skeptical world that, actually, he _did_ feel comfortable in the company of other men. The colonel accepted the man's attendance as his due.

Mrs. White kept her own confidence and continued to glare at the rest of the room from her corner.

The final arrival was met with some surprise at the door, for she was not on the guest list. She briefly explained to an unreadable Flint that her father, the original invitee, was too ill to travel; she would handle the business of the night on his behalf. She was given the hastily reconfigured name of Miss Green.

In the library, the other guests looked upon her without recognition. Miss Green, however, knew one of them, and _that_ is all that will be divulged at this time.  
  


* * *

  
Now that they were all gathered together, making stiff conversation and pretending to enjoy their drinks, Idelle left to check on dinner. Colonel Mustard, Professor Plum, and Miss Scarlet were very attentive in watching her bustling departure.

Outside, lightning crashed, highlighting bare branches and the thoroughly inhospitable road conditions that would trap them there for the evening. Inside, the butler appeared in the doorway of the library. What little conversation had been gaining traction dried up at his stern appearance.

“You'll have realized by now that nobody here is being addressed by their real name,” he said, regarding them all in turn. “My employer would ask that you utilize the aliases given to you for the duration of this evening.”

The guests glanced at each other, suspicion at varying levels of ill concealment. Mrs. Peacock was impatient. Colonel Mustard was bored. Professor Plum and Miss Scarlet accidentally caught each other's eye and immediately looked away with identical twitches of annoyance. Mrs. White and Miss Green both avoided looking at any of the others, but each for very different reasons.

Wind howled through the eaves of the house and a tree branch knocked into the library window. Down the hall, a dinner bell rang. It sounded mournful and far away, like the bell of a ship fogged over in a harbor.

The butler smiled at the sound. Something about his placid expression was dreadfully disconcerting to the guests.

“Dinner is ready,” he said.


	2. In the Dining Room with Small Talk

The dining room was small for a house otherwise so extravagant. A charitable observer might suggest its dimensions were intended to engender a sense of intimacy, but that night they registered only as claustrophobic. The world, which had already revealed itself to several of the guests as much smaller than they might hope, shrank further as they seated themselves around the cramped dining table.

Colonel Mustard did not sit, but eyed the empty chair at the end of the table like a man who was accustomed to taking it, and was philosophically wounded by the notion that it might belong to another.

“That for you?” he said to Flint.

Flint suppressed a sigh. “No, sir. I'm merely the butler.”

Several of the other guests glanced up; Flint had a voice that was at once highly suspicious and yet coaxingly impossible to entirely disbelieve. Perhaps it was the accent, a few thought.

Whatever the quality, it seemed to rankle the colonel. “And what exactly do you _do_?”

“I'm the head of the kitchen and dining room. I keep things,” his eyes darted over Mustard's person with a look just barely below impertinent, “tidy.”

Mustard glanced around the room and back out into the hall. He shook his head. “The energy it must take to maintain this all.” He took his seat with a grunt. “It's not man's work, you know.”

“And yet this man has been paid to do it.”

Mrs. Peacock, perched restlessly near the end of the table, asked airily, “What's all this about, then? This dinner party. We haven't even met our host yet.” She sounded concerned about the lapse in decorum, but underneath was only a steely desire to meet her opponent.

“Yes, when can we expect our host to take his seat?” inquired Professor Plum from her right side.

“That seat is for the seventh guest, Lord Ashe. He should be arriving shortly.”

“I thought Lord Ashe was our host,” Miss Green said, eyes coming up warily. Around the table, the others murmur in uneasy agreement. “Who is our host, Mr. Flint?”

The butler smiled at them but did not answer.

Idelle entered the dining room from the kitchen with distracting bustle and jiggle. She carried a tray laden with soup bowls. “Sharks' Fin Soup, madam,” she announced, placing the first bowl in front of Mrs. Peacock. She went along the table, serving all the guests.

They all looked down at the bowls in front of them.

Professor Plum eventually ventured, “Sharks' Fin. That's irregular.”

“We have a new cook,” said Flint. “It's his specialty.”

“Well, it's hot. I'm not going to just sit here,” said Mrs. White, leaning forward and grabbing a spoon. Beside her, the professor shrugged and likewise turned his attention to his bowl.

“But shouldn't we wait for the last guest?” asked Mrs. Peacock.

“I will keep something warm for him,” said Idelle.

“What did you have in mind, dear?” Miss Scarlet asked her. a knowing smile gracing her face as she glanced up. Idelle did not answer, but turned and stalked back into the kitchen.

White gave up her shallow pretense at manners and ate with her elbows on the table. Her black-clad shoulders hunched forward, suddenly vulture-like, as if she were accustomed to guarding her food. Plum's manners were more refined but obviously only through laborious care; both diners slurped audibly.

Mrs. Peacock looked down the table at them with a small moue of distaste. “Well our host isn't here to explain himself, and I don't care to make nice without knowing the terms.” She threw her napkin onto the table and sat back. “This is ridiculous. I don't know why I'm here.”

“Don't you?” said the colonel darkly.

“I know who you are,” said Miss Green unexpectedly. The others glanced between them, except for Mrs. White, who continued to eat.

Mrs. Peacock was too startled to try to hide it. “How? Who are you?”

“I also live in Washington,” is all Miss Green would say.

“Oh,” said Professor Plum, sitting back to regard Peacock. “So you're a politician's wife. Of course.”

“What do you mean by that, _of course_?” But when Plum did not answer, a complicated grimace crossed her face, and she said, “Fine. Yes, I am.”

“And who is your,” Mustard paused to lavish the following word with all the considerable weight of his contempt, “husband?”

She glared at him. “You know who, Charles.”

“Wait, you two know each other?” Plum asked.

“Sure they do,” said Miss Scarlet, twirling her spoon through the soup. “Couldn't you tell?”

Plum glanced at Mustard and did not reply. Mrs. White polished off the rest of her bowl, licked the spoon, and announced:

“Of course she's only here because of her connections. Seemed the type.”

“You're one to talk, _Mrs._ White – tell us, what does your husband do?” Peacock demanded, her veneer of civility wearing thin. She fixed the other woman with a somewhat insincere smile as White glanced over.

“Nothin',” she said flatly. Her mouth hitched up, showing a pointed white incisor. “He's dead.” While the others around the table took this information in with appropriate unease, she looked down at her empty bowl and tightly gripped her spoon like she wished it was something sharper.

Idelle banged out of the kitchen with another massive tray. Miss Scarlet and Professor Plum both jumped slightly.

“Porcini Pork Tenderloin,” she announced.

Peacock, Scarlet, and Green all discreetly shoved their bowls of untouched soup away. Mustard left his in place, with the half-formed desire to see Idelle bend close when collecting it.

“So what do you do in D.C., Miss Green?” asked Mrs. Peacock. And when Miss Green looked at her but did not answer, she pressed, “Come now. How are we supposed to get acquainted if we don't talk about ourselves?”

“Perhaps she doesn't want to get acquainted with you,” Miss Scarlet said suddenly.

She and Peacock stared at each other tensely for several moments; Peacock was the first to break away, two points of red burning high on her cheeks.

She said, “Well, I'm sorry for trying to keep the conversation going. As one used to these sorts of things, I felt it was incumbent upon me to help us all avoid an embarrassed silence.”

“Silence is not the worst thing,” said Plum. “I'm not sure why women feel the need to constantly fill it.”

“Spend a lot of time around women, do you, _Professor_?” Scarlet asked him snidely. At Plum's elbow, Mrs. White angled a disgruntled look up at him.

Plum's hands fluttered over the table in a complicated gesture, as his basic nature implored him to talk about himself, but his more prudent instincts demanded he desist. During this internal debate, everyone watched him in baffled silence.

Eventually the smart side won out and he restrained himself to: “I've had some practice, yes.”

“Practice does make perfect,” said Scarlet, switching her gaze fluidly to her true target. “I think men could always do with a little _practice_ , don't you, Mrs. Peacock?”

Peacock glared back at her.

“Oh, go on. Do tell us, Plum,” said Mrs. White, smirking sidelong at her dining companion. “What sort of business were you in?”

“Were?” repeated several people at once, for this was not a table of people who tended to miss nuance – nuance being the blood in the water of weakness, after all.

Plum pressed his mouth tight. He hastily said to Mustard, “How about you – are you actually a colonel, or is that another little joke of our host's?”

“Yeah,” said Mustard. “I'm a colonel.”

“And you also live in Washington,” prompted Miss Scarlet.

He bared his teeth at her. “You're just full of knowledge, aren't you. Pity it hasn't gotten you anywhere in life.”

She swept him with a dismissive look. “Honey, it's gotten me further than you'd think.”

“So wait – does everyone here live in D.C.?” asked Miss Green. They all looked around at each other uneasily.

“You know, I don't believe this pork is fully cooked?” said Mrs. Peacock suddenly, lifting a piece with her fork.

The doorbell rang.


	3. In the Hall with Barely Restrained Hostility

The new voice was also English. It was only in its presence that one who had an ear for such things could detect the slightest lapse in refinement in Flint's accent. But only a few back in the dining room were in possession of such an ear.

“Flint. I might have known.”

“Unlikely, I should think.”

“Don't you start. What's the meaning of all this?”

“Didn't you read your invitation? The house is playing host to a grand party.”

Back in the dining room, the cold silence maintained by the grand party-goers seemed to intensify.

Ashe's voice, already agitated, grew more disturbed. “And are you locking me _in_?”

The party-goers glanced around at one another.

“Securing the house, only, Lord Ashe.”

“Then you won't mind giving me the key.”

“Over my dead body, sir,” came the almost cheerful reply. “May I take your bags?”

“No,” said the lord slowly. “I'll be keeping mine with me. I think I'll need it.”


	4. (not a chapter) Remaining Cards

Never got to the point where the rest of the character were introduced so I'll just put them here in a batch:


End file.
